Weekend box office: Halloween scares its way to the top spot

Brad SturdivantOctober 21st, 2018

Bringing back a beloved horror movie icon for your movie and releasing it in October without any horror movie competition is a recipe for success. Combine that with generally positive reviews and you have HALLOWEEN (click the link to read our review), which is barrelling towards an $80 million opening at the weekend box office. That easily more than triples the top grossing film in the franchise, which was 2007’s HALLOWEEN. Few things in life are guaranteed, but it’s a safe bet a direct sequel is going to happen soon. Aside from HALLOWEEN, the smaller drama THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN cracked the top ten with a couple million. Not sure that’s good enough to get Robert Redford and Oscar nomination, but it’s a nice haul for a small film.

Next week is probably the most difficult weekend to predict all year. My initial guess is HALLOWEEN will stay on top, so the real question is what movie will ascend to second place. There are several new films opening up next week, all of which have a chance at the second spot. First up is SUSPIRIA; a remake of the 1977 Dario Argento horror film. Buzz has been strong for this one and it’s hard to bet against a horror movie, but between splitting its audience with the more commercial-friendly HALLOWEEN and the 2.5 hour runtime, I think it could struggle at the box office. Next up is JOHNNY ENGLISH STRIKES AGAIN. I’m not the biggest fan of Rowan Atkinson, so I’m not the best judge here, but the original opened with $9 million and the sequel opened with around $3 million, so there’s no reason to believe the third film won’t come somewhere in that range. Next there’s HUNTER KILLER with Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman. I don’t even know what to think about that one, but to be fair, audiences seem to like Gerard Butler and there’s not much competition when it comes to action adventure movies. The last one to keep an eye on is INDIVISIBLE. Faith-based movies are hard to predict, so this one could sneak into the top five. Note: the numbers below will be updated as they become final.